Good ol' Sal
Ejucaided Redneck
to join him and a few other people for dinner ahead of the appearance.
One of the others there was a yoo librarian, and I told her about my
"Sal can find anything and anybody" experience. She asked for the
written version and I hunted it up. There are enough "new" people --to
me anyway-- I thought I'd post what was a pair of radio commentaries a
while back.
*****
"MY" LIBRARIAN
A discussion with some other writers raised the question, to whom would
we aim some thanks, if we ever got a book in print? I mentioned a slew
of people, including a librarian, if I could ever find her name.
At fourteen, I was a snarly smart-mouthed kid who despised the Indiana
factory town to which his family had relocated. A worker in one of
those old Carnegie buildings was one of the few people I liked, and who
seemed to like me.
When I skipped school she let me hide out in the basement, where a
microfilm viewer and thousands of pages of old newspapers sparked --and
then fed-- what became an intense and continuing interest in real
history, as opposed to the censored pap in high school textbooks.
She let me use my kiddy library card to check out books from the adult
section, and when I brought them back we'd talk about what I'd read.
She introduced me to the work of MacKinlay Cantor --this was when the
unCivil War Centennial was a big item-- and helped me figure out why a
best selling historian wasn't necessarily a good one. She named volumes
of Mark Twain I didn't know existed, then pointed me into the biography
section where I got lost for a few months.
She even had a local television show, on a UHF station probably no more
than a dozen people at a time watched, and interviewed me half a dozen
times over the course of a few years.
She listened when I talked about wanting to be "a writer," and read some
of my earliest scribblings.
Decades later, when my writing started to have some success, I tried to
find her. To me she'd been unforgettable. An attractive woman with a
very short haircut in a place most "grown up" women of my acquaintance
wore their hair long, she was an immigrant from the deep south, with a
thick Georgia accent that was musical amidst the nasal pronouncements of
native Hoosiers. She was a "town personality," what with those TV shows
and all.
Nobody on the Indiana prairie remembered her. I corresponded with
retired librarians, with women my age who once held high school jobs at
the library, talked to any number of people. Not a soul could recall
this lady who loomed so large in my own memories.
I didn't even know what age bracket she might fit into. In those days
anybody past 25 was "old," and when I knew her the library lady could
have been anything from a new college grad to an "elderly" mid-forties.
There was a good chance she'd dead, if she was that old, a good chance
she might be alive if she was younger.
Every now and then I tried one more time to find her, or what happened
to her. I thought she'd like to know one of the voices that shows up
now and then on NPR's Bob-Edwards-era "Morning Edition" got over being a
pissed-off kid. I figured she'd like to hear how her encouragement of
me-as-writer culminated in the Faulkner Medal.
That's what I told people in that email discussion.
Next time, I'll tell you how one of them helped me to find this "lost
librarian."
###############
A while back, I told you how I'd lost track of a very special
librarian. She looked past what I was, to what I might become. She
encouraged me to be a writer, to think, and let me check out history
books and biographies from the "grown up" section of the library. Once
age gave me the sense to realize what a very real gift this lady's
presence and attentions had been, I set out to find her.
And couldn't.
For fifteen years, every now and then I'd take another run at it. I
talked to librarians at the place where I'd known her, but they were all
too young to have known "my" librarian. A helpful person gave me the
addresses of some people who'd retired from that system, but the fact I
didn't actually know much about my lost librarian was a serious
problem. I didn't know her name, and couldn't even give a reasonable
guess as to her age. I remembered she'd once upon a time had dark,
short hair, and spoke with a lovely, eliding southern accent.
That's not much to go on, even if someone wants to help.
I mentioned all this in a posting to a Usenet newsgroup, a piece of the
internet that's a whole lot like an electronic bulletin board, with
people writing notes that everybody can read. And everybody can comment
on them, which is where someone named Sally came into the picture.
Sally's a librarian herself, and thought this book lady from my old days
ought to know that slouchy, pouty kid from 1961 turned out a little
better than anyone might have hoped.
Sally's also the most talented and tenacious researcher I've ever
known. Without telling me what she was up to, Sally set out to find
"my" librarian. Seems like librarians are like cops and doctors and
lawyers: they'll go a lot further for one of their own who knows what
questions to ask. From talking to people in the Indiana town where I'd
known her, Sally discovered someone who remembered "my" librarian's
name, and found out the lady'd been a writer, with some published
children's books to her credit.
Surfing around on the Internet, Sally found an interview with "my"
librarian, and a reference to a small town in New Hampshire. On a
hunch, Sally called their library and found out Jeanne --"my"
librarian's name-- had lived and worked there. But she'd retired, and
nobody knew where she'd gone. Then a New Hampshire librarian called an
Indiana librarian, who called Sally with the name of yet another person
who might have known Jeanne, and who might, on the offhand chance, know
where she went after New Hampshire.
Turns out Jeanne was in Massachusetts, I got a telephone number from
information, and one afternoon finally spoke to this woman who made such
an impression on me.
Did she remember me?
Nope, but that wasn't surprising. I suspect I wasn't the only kid with
a bad attitude for whom Jeanne cut a break. I was probably only one in
a long chain of youngsters who'll never forget her.
Was she glad to hear from me?
Seemed to be. We talked for a long time, and have continued
communicating via email. Turns out she still has a strong interest in
writing, and we do some emailing back and forth about that.
So what's the lesson here?
There are a couple of them.
The obvious one is never give up looking for an opportunity to thank
someone who was kind to you decades ago, someone you haven't forgotten,
someone who contributed to making you what you are today, whether they
know it or not.
The other lesson?
If you want to find something out, ask a good reference librarian.
Those people can find just about anything.
*****
End note: I connected with Jeanne in time for her name to be mentioned
in the acknowledgments page of my first book, a collection of short
stories.
--
http://www.bobsloansampler.com:
Fiction, poetry, essays, MP3s, radio & TV interviews
Chapter 1 of "Home Call: A Novel of Kentucky"
3 Stories from "Bearskin to Holly Fork: Stories From Appalachia,"
& two new stories
And new photos
Latest Herald-Leader Column: http://tinyurl.com/adq7q
tride...@pantlessoptusnet.com.au
God you're good.
--
Robbie
wishing he was half as good a writer
as Ejucaided.
Most Noble Theophilus: What an interesting person!